Jupiter spewed radiation and heat, twice as much heat as it received from the Sun. Anyone living on Io needed constant protection. Jupiter’s massive gravitation and proximity and the gravity from nearby Europa and Ganymede pulled and pushed at Io. The planetary body constantly stretched like a rubber band. That friction heated the insides of Io enough to create the most active volcanoes in the Solar System. It also created permanent lava lakes. Those lakes were Io’s prized possession. Fissionable materials spewed up from the moon’s core. Those fissionables helped feed the system’s reactors. It meant that lava miners on floating platforms and under harsh radioactive conditions made up the majority of Io’s population.
The second Galilean moon—Europa—also received massive amounts of radiation, five hundred and forty rems a day. Ice one-hundred kilometers thick covered the surface, with liquid water below. The ice mantle made Europa the smoothest planetary body in the Solar System.
While staring at Io, Marten wondered if the pod had enough radiation shielding. He shook his head. How did it help him worrying about that now? He had to fix the air-recycler first, attach water and waste tubes to their vacc-suits. If he failed, they would die in less than a day.
Marten went back to the panels and began to work.
Three days later, Marten sat back in despair. They had air, but no extra water and their suit’s disposal systems were near their limit. His stomach growled. He was hungry and tired. According to his best estimate, they had traveled at least twenty-one thousand kilometers from the cyborg-infested dreadnaught.
Omi floated near the sealed hatch. Osadar sat in the pilot’s chair, staring out of the window.
Marten picked up a calibrating wrench. He had to keep trying.
“What’s that?” Osadar whispered.
It took Marten several seconds to respond. “What do you see?”
Osadar pointed at the window.
“Stars?” asked Marten.
Osadar swiveled in the pilot’s chair. Behind her helmet’s visor, she had an elongated face that suited her elongated body. Her arms and legs were titanium girders with hydraulic joints, presently hidden by her vacc-suit. Silver sockets cupped black plastic eyes, with tiny red dots for pupils.
Marten recalled that cyborgs had enhanced vision.
Osadar faced the window again. “There is a flare of light. A vessel is braking, likely matching velocities with us. That means the cyborgs have found us.”
With his heart beating faster, Marten floated toward the window. He saw nothing but stars. Wait, far in the distance, one of the stars pulsed the slightest bit.
“Do you wish me to kill you?” Osadar asked.
“Listen to her,” Omi said hoarsely.
“I entered the conversion machine,” Osadar told him. “It peels off your skin, removes organs—”
“No!” Marten said. “We keep fighting.”
“Once you’re on the conveyer,” said Osadar, “you will wish you had chosen otherwise.”
“If it comes to that, Omi can shoot me.”
“You are mere humans,” said Osadar, “with pathetic human reflexes. Once you decide to shoot each other, you will already be tangled and on your way to conversion.”
“You’re depressed,” Marten said. “You know what helps me get out of my depression?”
“Yes, your inability to correctly assess reality.”
“I get angry. I get angry with people or cyborgs trying to use me. I’ve learned you have to bend sometimes. You do it, waiting for your one opportunity to strike back.”
“Bravado is useless against the cyborgs,” said Osadar.
“The cyborgs lost on Mars,” Marten said.
“That was a minor setback,” Osadar said. “Social Unity and the Highborn are even more doomed now than before the Battle for Mars.”
“That’s an odd way to look at it.”
Osadar shook her head. “I believe the Highborn have frightened the Neptunian Web-Mind. That will make it even more ruthless than before.”
“How could that be possible?” Marten asked.
Osadar stared into space.
Marten glanced back at Omi. Omi shrugged. Marten studied the dot. It seemed brighter than before, making his gut twist. More cyborgs—he had no idea how to defeat them this time.
Osadar spoke again. “I do not know how, Marten Kluge. But I know that whatever the cyborgs have decided to do, it will be to destroy the Highborn. A sense of fear will compel them.”
“Can computers fear?”
“They are not computers, but symbiotic creatures of flesh and machine. Beings of any kind are always more dangerous when they fear their enemy, for then they fight with the ruthlessness of terror.”
Fear bit into Marten as the bloom of starry brightness began to turn into a spaceship. How could he defeat the cyborgs a second time? He had no idea.
-4-
The ship was a small asteroid or a large meteor. To Marten, staring out of the pod’s window, it seemed as if someone had magnetized the inter-solar rock. Then that someone had brushed it over a planetary junkyard. Pipes, tanks, tubes, missile-clusters, engine-exhausts, globes and other assorted junk stuck to it. He suspected that the life-supporting chambers were buried in the center of the meteor. Instead of adding particle shields to a regular ship, the builders had started with a tiny asteroid and added to it.
Using his handscanner, he studied the ship’s dimensions. It was smaller than the Rousseau had been.
“A Thales-class vessel,” Osadar said. “They were being phased out before the war with Social Unity thirteen years ago. The near total annihilation of the Jovian expeditionary fleet returned them to favor.”
“That makes it a military vessel.”
“And therefore the probability is ninety percent that it is under cyborg control,” Osadar said.
Marten bit his lip as his gut curled. They had nothing to fight with but two Gauss needlers. He hated the helpless feeling. He should have recharged the portable plasma cannon.
“I’m picking up something on my headphones,” Omi said. “They’re asking if anyone is alive.”
“Do not answer,” Osadar said.
“Should we just sit here and die until our vacc-suits give out?” Marten asked. “Answer them.”
“You will regret it,” Osadar said.
Marten fiddled with his helmet radio, hearing nothing but static. The EMP blast from the Mayflower had damaged it. He was unable to pick up anything from the ship outside. It was hard enough understanding Omi and Osadar.
“They’ve acknowledged,” said Omi.
In seeming despair, Osadar bent forward and rested her helmeted forehead on the control panel.
“We’ll kill the first ones,” Marten told her.
Osadar said nothing.
Marten watched the meteor-ship. A piece of the junkyard fired jets, detaching itself from the small asteroid. It was a black globe, probably the same size as their original pod.
Here we go again.
As Marten watched the globe ease toward them, a headache spiked a point between his eyes. Did cyborgs control the Thales-class warship? Or were Jovians allied with cyborgs? None of this made any sense.
Forty-six harrowing minutes later, Marten set his Gauss needler at high velocity. Then he waited with a tripping heart as the red flare of a slowly moving laser-torch cut open their tomb. Omi stood beside him, with his own needler out.
Marten clunked his helmet against Omi’s as he chinned off his radio. They would speak through the metal of their helmets. “If it looks like they’re going to capture us…” Marten said.
“Yeah,” Omi said, his voice sounding tinny and faraway, “in the heart.”
“In the heart,” Marten agreed.